I have to admit that when Way Huge first launched in 1992 I was not really in the market for a boutique pedal, I was 16 years old had a nice Ibanez RG550DX, a crappy tranny amp and a single Boss distortion pedal. When Way Huge closed its doors in 1999 I still hadn’t tried one of their boutique effects, many of these original pedals now fetch a lot of money on evilbay so it is lucky for you that Dunlop recently resurrected the Way Huge brand and with it 3 pedals.

The Swollen Pickle was the most sought after Way Huge pedal and the MkII brings with it some enhancements that makes this pedal even more desirable. The MkII Swollen Pickle has 5 knobs on the lightweight but quite large pedal in order to sculpt your Fuzz. The main knobs are the Loudness, Filter and Sustain. Loudness does just that, it controls the volume and adds a bit of dirt to the tone when cranked too, the Filter is a band-pass tone filter and Sustain does a little more than add sustain, it basically controls how much Fuzz you want. But there are 2 more controls, Scoop and Crunch. They may look like small controls but they make a massive difference to the sound, Scoop as you can probably guess is a mid-scoop control and Crunch controls the compression intensity of the Fuzz. Phew thats a lot of effect parameters to play with, but that only covers the visible controls! Inside the pedal are another 2 controls Voice, which sets the intensity of the Scoop control and Clip which varies between 2 sets of clipping diodes for smooth or opened Fuzz sustain. I chose to leave those controls as they were set in the factory for the purposes of this demonstration.

I created 2 videos, one to show the various Rhythm tones and another to show how the pedal can be used for lead lines. I didn’t intend to do 2 separate videos but I found that I had 30 minutes of footage that I had to condense into a YouTube video and this pedal really does have a lot of possible tonal variations. I’ve never owned a Fuzz pedal so I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was surprised at the versatility of the effect I found, as you can see and hear above, very usable crunchy rhythm and lead tones for different situations it certainly isn’t just for 60′s & 70′s rock fans. I have to confess though I did spend way too long with all the dials cranked trying to come up with some Jack White riffs. I imagine this pedal would be interesting stacked with different Overdrive and Boost pedals to overload the Fuzz effect even more.

If you like the look and sound of this pedal then stay tuned because next week I will be giving you the chance to win this very pedal which is why I didn’t mess with the internal controls.

For more information on Way Huge pedals check out www.wayhuge.com and jimdunlop.com.